We'll Build a Fortress Out of Our Secrets
by on rooftops
Summary: "I can teach you how to dance in the rain.  And I promise, this time I won't laugh." — Daphne/Theo - For Ellie


**A/N: **For Ellie (s i l v e r a u r o r a) because it's her birthday (in 2 hours here but hey, I'm early) and because she's totally awesome.  
I think I got all the prompts in. Anything that looks contrived, that's cuz it is. :-)  
I hope you like it, love!  
Oh, right. I said "fuck" a lot in this. Just in case that offends anyone.  
**Disclaimer: **I don't own Harry Potter.

He didn't intend for Daphne to walk in on him.

And before you ask, no, he was not doing _that_, you pervert.

Although, all things considered, _that_ might have been better.

Daphne stopped in the doorway to the dungeon and her butterfly-hands flew up to her mouth to stop her laugh from ricocheting against the stone walls as he crashed to the floor, his face an awful shade of red.

"What the fuck, Nott?" Her blue eyes were still glistening with laughter as she watched him disentangle his legs and stagger to his feet. And this task was definitely not made any easier by the fact that he was wearing tights and was really not used to the way they slipped against his skin, so it's in no way pathetic that it took him so long to stand. Except, maybe, for the fact that he was wearing tights.

"What the fuck, Greengrass?" He responded, oh-so-intelligently, as he tugged his jumper down over his thighs a bit.

"Sorry, maybe I should've rephrased that." She cocked her head, twisted one sunny curl around a slender finger and said, "What the fuck are you _doing_, Nott?"

"Where the fuck are your _eyes_, Greengrass?" He asked, waving his wand and silencing the Tchaikovsky that had been filling the damp room with soft lilting notes.

She batted her mascara-coated eyelashes at him and smirked, "Right here, darling. But my eyes must be lying, because they're telling me that you're doing ballet." She shook her head, "You're a boy, and you're straight – so far as I know – and you're most definitely not Billy Elliot, so I'd like to know _what the fuck are you doing_?"

"Billy who?" Nott grabbed his robes from where they had been piled on the floor and threw them on, securing them over his messy ensemble of Slytherin green jumper and Gryffindor red tights.

"It's a Muggle thing," Daphne shook her head – she forgot how uneducated so much of Hogwarts was. "You're still not explaining yourself."

"Do I really need to explain myself to you, Greengrass?" His lips were a harsh sneer across his pale face, and she felt her hand drifting toward her wand even as she remembered that fighting another pureblood, and a Slytherin at that, would get her in trouble with the Carrows.

"Unless you want me to tell the whole school that you own tights," she cocked her head, "And that they're red. Where the bloody hell did you get those, Nott? The oversized clothing shop in the North Pole?"

"Look, Greengrass, I wouldn't expect you to understand, considering what your family's like."

"What do you mean, 'what my family's like?' My family is fine."

"I mean that you and your sister barely even speak to your parents." He shrugged, "My family is very close."

Daphne dropped her hand to her wand, deciding that the Carrows didn't need to know if she just gave him boils in a…seldom seen location. "And what does that have to do with prancing around in whore-colored tights?" She asked, mostly to distract him from the subtle movement of her wand.

"Well," he hesitated, then said in a rush, "See, it's this dumb tradition my family has. The Christmas after we come of age my parents make us put on a ballet show and they don't expect me to this year, since there's the war and everything, but I thought it'd be kind of neat if I did it anyway. Kind of to show my parents that life goes on, and all. And they're not whore-colored. It's Christmassy."

She slipped her wand back into her pocket, seeing as how Nott was actually being kind of endearing. If you were the type of person who liked caramel chocolates – sweet, gooey center beneath a hard exterior – which she certainly was not, "You realized you'd have more dignity if you dressed up as the fucking Easter Bunny?"

"You're kidding. The Easter Bunny _hops._" He grinned at her, a disarming grin that changed his face and made Daphne crave just a taste of caramel. "Red-and-Green-Theo _pirouettes_." And he attempted a pirouette, his leg stretching up and his arms curving over his head, but he caught his foot on his billowing robes and fell to the ground, his legs a tangle of nearly transparent red fabric.

"Red-and-Green-Theo crashes, you mean." Daphne crossed the room and extended a hand to help him to his feet, "And we're going to be late for dinner if you take any longer getting out of here. D'you want to change, or were you planning on coming up to dinner with your tights showing under your robes?"

"Wouldn't you and every other girl just _love_ that? Turn around," he waved his hand imperiously, and Daphne raised an eyebrow.

"Someone's full of himself. Why would I want to watch?" She turned and tapped her foot in mock impatience as he struggled to peel the tights off.

"You're clearly delusional. Who wouldn't want to?" He sighed as he finally released his feet and tugged his trousers on, "Come on, we're going to be late for supper."

She hurried after him, "That's what I said."

They shared secrets the way other people share clothes; they only spoke to each other about things that no one else knew about. Their conversations were often hissed in the corridors between classes or when they met by chance on the grounds or in the dungeons. If they hadn't been pureblood Slytherins the Carrows probably would have suspected them of mutiny, but as it was they just received hard glances from the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws and even a few Hufflepuffs who probably thought they were planning to send all of Dumbledore's Army to the Carrows. As if.

That was their most significant secret, one that they didn't just exchange but actually both held close – they were against the Carrows. Oh, not the way Dumbledore's bleeding-heart Army was. That thing was a bloody warhorse with a bee buzzing incessantly in its ears, a powerhouse of fools. Daphne and Theo would undermine the Carrows the sane, cunning, Slytherin way.

They didn't put pen to paper all throughout Christmas hols, so Daphne had no idea how Theo's master plan to lighten his family's collective mood worked out. She didn't even see him until a few days after they had returned to Hogwarts, when a chance wind blew open the front doors and she caught sight of him standing on the front steps, staring out into icy rain.

"What're you doing?" She moved to stand beside him and he glanced over his shoulder, a frown curving his lips.

"You know, turns out, even seeing me in a jumper and tights isn't enough to change the way my parents see the world."

She watched the way the rain fell on the grass, turning the grounds into a monotony of gray for a few moments before responding, "So your dad's…"

"Still a right bastard, yeah." He shook his head angrily, "I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I mean, honestly, the man is clearly shacking up with the bad guys here. Why do I even want to make it better for him?"

"He's your dad. Of course you'll still care about him."

He shook his head, "It's such bullshit, though. This is the man who taught me how to ride a broomstick, who took me bloody Muggle fishing before I could do magic, who told me that he'd be proud of me no matter what I did. How can he be so _wrong_?"

She placed her hand very lightly on his shoulder, not looking at him, and squeezed slightly, "We don't do this very well, you know."

"What?"

"We usually just tell each other things and then mock each other. What I mean is, I'm no good at comforting. What would you like me to do?"

He chuckled, "Want to destroy the Dark Lord for me?"

She shrugged, "That one might be a bit out of my power." She grabbed his hand, suddenly, like she was always touching him, and pulled him off the steps and into the rain. "But I can teach you how to dance in the rain. And I promise, this time I won't laugh."

He smiled down at her as she started whirling beneath the raindrops, and murmured, "But I love your laugh."

She didn't quite hear him, but it didn't matter because he had joined her in the dance and that told her all she needed to know.

That night, after they had both cast drying charms on each other and hidden themselves in the same dungeon room where Daphne had discovered Theo's passion for ballet, he asked her what she thought of it all.

She looked down at where he was lying on the cold floor from her seat on the table, which may have, at one time, been a rack. "Think of what all?"

"This war. This school. Dumbledore's Army and the Slytherins and our families."

"I think we shouldn't talk about it here." She stretched out her foot and drew a design down his leg, and he stared up at her like her touching him wasn't the most natural thing in the world. But he didn't pull away.

"Why?"

"Because this room should be safe from all of that. We need a place where we can forget about the war and our families and everything and just be who we would be if it weren't all going on."

"But there's no point in trying to escape it."

"Not for good, no." She slid down from the table and sat cross legged on the floor, picking up his hand and playing absentmindedly with this fingers. "But for the time we spend in here, it'll be nice to think about something else."

"What else do you want to think about?" He sat up slowly and moved a little closer to her, hesitantly, like he was waiting to see if she'd pull away from him.

But of course she wouldn't.

"Not think, even. Maybe we could just _not_ think."

"Maybe we could just," he leaned forward and slid his hand behind her neck, his fingers threading through her sun-hair as his lips found hers and his words fell against her tongue, "do this."

She thought a nonverbal response might be the best sort, and he silently agreed.

**A/N**: reviews make me happy :)


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